a) 15th July 2016: My Initial thoughts
Since the first photo from the Alien: Covenant film set was shown, because of the variety of colours of the lights featured in the set photos, with a strong orange, yellow, red, green and blue but lacking the purple, the dim lighting seen so far brings me to
think about the Gaspar Noé 's bewildering 2010 movie, "Enter The Void" which takes place in a
state of reality between death and reincarnation in the manner of the
Thibetan Book of the Dead. In the movie, the surrounding city was reimagined as if seen in a state of an hallucination. Marc Caro who co-directed "City of the Lost Children" with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, was the art supervisor for the movie.

b) Thoughts about hallucinogens as a theme
One could just consider the lighting from those initial set photos as
only a slightly more modern sense of dark lighting than seen in films
like Alien, and perhaps some aspect of Blade Runner too which mostly
takes place in a dimly lit world. After movies such as Avatar which
displayed a world that seemed to follow the theme of an Ayahuasca
visionary world, and the popularity of discussion about DMT
hallucinations. I might begin to think of this sort of type of concept to vaguely think about in the background if one might have seen something about or remembered Noé's movie. Perhaps loosely this thought works in the way that I wondered if Prometheus asked the ethereal question, partially because of its excessive display of holographic technology perhaps along with the continuous use of ethereal blue lighting, about whether the universe was a hologram. Hopefully for some of us, watching the film might be another trip for a lesson at mytholology mystery school.

cityscape from Gaspar Noé's "Enter The Void"

cityscape from Gaspar Noé's "Enter The Void"

c) Noé experiments with hallucinogens
"Noé
had tried various hallucinogens
in his youth, and used those experiences as inspiration for the visual
style. Later, when the director was already planning the film, he tried
the psychoactive brew ayahuasca,
in which the active substance is DMT. This was done in the Peruvian
jungle, where the brew is legal due to its traditional use as an
entheogen. Noé described the experience as very intense, and said he
regarded it "almost like professional research."Since few on the design team had ever taken a hallucinogen, it was
necessary for Noé to collect and provide visual references in the forms
of paintings, photographs, music videos, and excerpts from films.One
reference used was the works of biologist Ernst Haeckel, whose drawings
influenced the organic patterns seen during Oscar's visions." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enter_the_Void)